A scene is commonly understood to refer to a particular portion of a film's script. Thus, e.g., scene 10 may refer to the car chase and scene 111 may refer to the first scene. A take is one recorded performance of a scene, and each scene may have many takes.
A stick (also known as a clapper) refers to the brightly painted pieces of wood that are brought together with a “clap”, at the beginning of each take. The filmed image of the sticks coming together is typically used in conjunction with their recorded sound or report to provide a common audio and visual reference point for synchronization.
As film is being shot, only selected takes are chosen by the Director to be printed. These takes are circled on the camera reports that are sent to the film laboratory along with the original negative. The Production Sound Mixer also indicates the “circled takes” on his/her sound report, which takes are to be transferred from the production sound masters to perforated magnetic film.
The sound for circled takes is typically transferred to a film referred to as a “stripe”.
When the negative arrives at the film laboratory it is known as a “camera roll”. The camera rolls are developed and then physically cut, with all of the circled takes spliced together into “Lab rolls”. The lab rolls are then sent to the dailies facility for transfer.
While the negative is being processed, the production sound masters are being transferred at a separate facility. The production tapes are most commonly digital elements such as DAT (Digital Audio Tape) or any of the newer file based systems, but other mediums including analog tape may be used. At the dailies facility, lab rolls are transferred to either a video tape or file based recording system. Multiple lab rolls are concatenated together to form a “dailies roll or tape”.
While the image is being transferred, sound is synchronized with the picture. As is mentioned above, this is typically performed by synchronizing the video of the stick being closed with the audio of the same. This is done for every “circle take” designated by the camera and sound reports.
Accordingly, the process of producing dailies is a serial process where normally one stage must be completed before the next state can begin. Disadvantageously, this results in a time consuming process.